The Destiny of Satan in Christianity and Islam

While with some of my blog posts I aim to share insights, others are written with the hope of gaining insights from my followers. Today’s post is of the latter variety.

In my Bible reading today a passage from 1 John came up:

He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.

(1 John 3:8, NKJV)

I find it interesting that Christianity provides a solution to what will happen to Satan in the End Times, alluded to here in 1 John. In the book of Revelation, which is the final of book in the New Testament and deals with events related to the End Times, we read the following:

And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

(Revelation 20:7-10, ESV)

What occurred to me today is that the Bible contains a great deal of prophecy, whereas the Qur’an does not. I don’t think the Qur’an has teaching related to the End Times and the events which will unfold, whereas the Bible does. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I have read the Qur’an a few times now and I don’t think there is much prophecy.

The reason I find this so interesting is because I’m passionate about interfaith dialogue and the ways in which the Bible and the Qur’an are similar and different. I know that Muslims do discuss eschatology (the study of the End Times), because I once had a conversation with an Ahmadi Muslim who went into quite a lot of detail concerning his perspective on End Times events. However, I don’t know what his sources were.

It’s possible that there is eschatological teaching in the Qur’an which I’m simply not recalling, or perhaps there are non-Quranic sources (such as the Hadith literature) which give Muslims their understanding of the End Times. Perhaps someone can comment and let me know?

If the Bible is a prophetic book, but the Qur’an is not, this would seemingly lead to an argument that both Scriptures are important in different ways, and that both should be embraced for different reasons. This is of considerable interest to me in terms of interfaith understanding.

I look forward to any relevant thoughts in the comments.